The Role of Semiotics and Code-Switching in Uniting the Society

Over few decades, language always perform as an important role in the society for the purpose of communication in mankind society, it brings up a human community and even a civilization. However, language has been the pillar of communication that has divide mankind into different groups. Those who speak common mother tongues often group together as one and hence form a different sort of society, and this applies very strongly to Malaysia. Malaysia is a multicultural country represented by different ethnic groups such as Malay, Chinese, India, and others.

Despite that Malay being Malaysia national language, people in Malaysia often speak other languages and different group formed based on what their mother tongue is, and this has been said to divide the people in Malaysia too.

A good example tells that language divides people is the issue about the Malaysia Finance Minister, Lim Guan Eng had been critique for ignoring Malay language as Malaysia national language for issuing an translated press statement in his own mother tongue which is Chinese language.

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The actual case makes people starts wondering that did language united or divided people from different ethnics? Did the language different is a major issue in Malaysia that will brings the divide of the ethnics? An analysis of the Finding Malaysian campaign by Digi Telecommunication will show how the language difference is not a problem but is an advantage in our national context.

The Basic of Semiotics and Code Switching

Semiotics as the study of signs is frequently include in the advertising agencies to express the advertiser's message through the use of signs or symbols to the viewers.

The Denotation and Connotation theory suggested by Roland Barthers can describe the relationship between signifier and signified. Denotation as the primary meaning of the word that comes to the viewers and connotation goes to the ideas and emotions that the target audience gets after they received the primary meaning of the word, and it is commonly affected by the experience and the cultural background of the receiver to decide it belongs to positive or negative. Myth goes to the result when denotation and connotation blends and may lead the viewer to a new idea and even brings a fact.

Code switching in linguistic means changing language alternatively in a sentence. Crystal (1987) suggests that code switching or language switching occurs when two bilingual individuals alternates two or more languages during their speech between them. This phenomenon always appear in bilingual or multilingual community from a multi-ethnic society such as Malaysia and code switching may happens due to several reasons.

Digi Telecommunication Malaysia is one of the major telecommunication company in Malaysia unknown with an high coverage mobile service provider. They is also unknown with they are the first telecommunication company which release and provide several mobile communication service plan and fully digital cellular network in Malaysia. Beside the business advertisement, they release the some cultural festive advertisement such as Deepavali, Chinese New Year. They also release the nation festive ads which are the Malaysia Independence Advertisement and Malaysia day advertisement.

As a multinational brand from Malaysia, they focus on the advertising campaign which highlight on how did they make the relationships between the physicals closer through their services, and this can be shown in their pass advertisement campaign and this can show in their pass campaign. For Example, the Bukalah Hati advertisements with a video ads around 4 minutes and 30 seconds short film brings out a touching message of tolerance to any physicals toward the viewers at the same time selling their brands.

The Individuals named Malaysia

With the collaboration of the creative agency Naga DDB, Digi Telecommunications Malaysia came out an advertising campaign with two print ads and two video ads about the Malaysia Day in 2015 with the name ‘Finding Malaysia’. Malaysia Day was a remarkable day falls on 16th September to commemorate the formation of Malaysia through the combination of Malaya federation, Sarawak and North Borneo. Although Malaysia Day is equally important as the Independence Day on 31st August, but most people nowadays only treat Malaysia Day as a public holiday.

Malaysia Rani, a Malaysian with the name Malaysia

The first print ads comes along with a video around 2 minutes with a title of the combine of Malay and English call ‘Nama Paling Power’, which means the most powerful name in English. It told a story about a young man as the host of the project leading an Indian lady keep asking the passing by pedestrian on the street to guess the most popular baby name after a country and later guess the Indian lady name which is same as a country. The story then reveals the lady name which is Malaysia Rani to the Pedestrians by showing them her identity card. The pedestrian was shock and feel surprise and start to make friends with the Indian lady. At the end of the video, the conversation of the host and the lady tells that they are finding another person who also name Malaysia, and asking the viewers of the video to hashtag them KitaMalaysia if they know anyone whom name Malaysia.

The print ad comes along shows the visual image of the an old Indian lady in beautiful Sari, sitting in roadside café full of peoples and talking to a man whom back to the camera view. The first view of the advertisement brings up the viewers that the Indian lady live in a very comfortable and peace environment.

A short text written “My name is Malaysia. I was born on 31st August” directly tells the audiences who the lady is and her birthday falls on the Malaysia Independence Day. And the paragraphs in the yellow boxes below tells the story of this Indian lady that how she get her name, and what did she face she owns a different name call ‘Malaysia’. The Indian lady tells that she is proud of her name, her birthday wish， how she love her country and her message to the Malaysians.

When Malaysia Rani meets another Malaysia

Same as the previous, the second edition advertisement of this campaign also comes along with a video. Different from the first advertisement video, this advertisement video is longer. The plot of the second advertisement video shows a Malay young whom name Tun Malaysia Venecia Zaman Riera and the Indian lady of the first video, Malaysia Rani. Both of them tell about how did they get their name, how they live in a happy a peaceful life although some people surrounding them teasing and make fun with their name for the reason containing a country’s name, and they wish to meet another person whom share the same name with them. At the end part of the video, they meet each other and hug each other happily for the reason that they actually meet another person sharing the same name with each other.

The second print ad shows the interaction of two females hugging to each other with a happy reaction. The description beside their portrait reveals who they are and they share a same name ‘Malaysia’ in their full name. It comes along with the paragraphs in the yellow boxes above two females. The paragraphs tell the story of another girl in the ads, Tun Malaysia. The paragraph tells the story of Tun Malaysia and tells how she is proud for sharing a name with her country, Malaysia.

They Communicate by mixing languages

As the video tells a heart-warming positive plot about two physicals share the same name when they met each other, this memorable advertisement also trying to give out positive and patriotism message during the national day and also help to cheer Malaysians from the sombre mood of the plane incident.

There are similarities for both video and the print advertisements although they are conducted in English, but the switching of the language occurs in the advertisements. For the video ads, only Malay subtitles are available. Throughout both short video, although the host and Malaysia Rani speaks English during the most conversation, they also speaks some Malay during their conversation. The pedestrians involve in the name guessing game speaks English and Malay, and some of them mix some Malay vocabularies although they have their conversation in English. In the second video, during the interview of Malay girl Tun Malaysia and the Indian lady Malaysia Rani tells their own background stories, they both using their mother tongue which are Malay and Tamil. When comes to the both lady meet each other, they communicate with Malay and little English. This phenomenon portrays that various ethnic groups are able to live peacefully although they speaks with different language. In Malaysia, different ethnics comes from different background, dialect and mother tongue, and English didn’t contain any cultural context in Malaysia, only works as a lingau franca which means the bridge language to let people from different ethnics may get the message from the advertisements. Besides, the use of the own mother tongue during the interview of both lady would make the Malay and the Indian target audience quickly related to the advertisements.

On the print advertisement, ‘Selamat Hari Merdeka’ was directly translated from Malay which means ‘Happy National Day’. The writing of ‘the student and descendent of Puteri Gunung Ledang’ in the second print ads goes to the message revelas that the young girl is from the Perak noble family as ‘Puteri Gunung Ledang’ goes to the meaning about a myth of a princess from the Ledang mountain in Perak in Malay. The use of Malay in the English advertisements may grab the attention of the Malay target audience.

Throughout the whole advertisement, the semiotics and code switches works. The denotation, connotation and myth from semiotics brings up the message and values of the advertisements. According to Luna and Perrachio (2005), the good method to advertise the bilingual and multilingual language holder is using the code-switched advertisements as mixing the language is a very common phenomena practise in the bilingual or multilingual society. Sometimes, code switching occurs when the physical may not able to express the meaning itself.

Conclusion

In conclusion, semiotic analysis and code-switching shows that the Digi advertising campaign create a good communication bridge between the ethnics by using the code-switching.